I miss the days when my skin was whole and my blood stayed inside, warm, circulating, living. Now I have holes all over, steady leaks moistening my garments, sucking cloth to little wet circles that itch like bug bites.

Which they are. I'll get to that.

People have begun to notice. The crimson gaps reached my face last Sunday. One little one under my left sideburn, about the side of a tackhead, and a large ugly one, big as a quarter, folded over my right jawline. They dried, roughly scabbed over, but they're not healing. No fresh pink babyskin for me. None of them heal anymore, my entire body over. Wearing a belt is especially uncomfortable.

It was two months ago that I woke up naked and discovered skin missing from my right hip, two inches wide, vaguely shaped like Tennessee. I touched it, massaging it gently, concerned and annoyed. It was slick and spongy, like spoiled meat, and my untrimmed fingernail sunk right in with no resistance. Nerve endings woke up in a great goddamn hurry and sent my brain an urgent message: STOP THAT NOW.

Days would pass without fresh night bites. (That's what I called them, mentally, for they only appeared while I slept.) I didn't know yet that I'd accidentally identified them correctly, for bites they were. Not little love nips, though. No. They were great gory gouges from gluttonous cockroaches that would mow away entire patches of me. I had become a grazing pasture.

When, after days without incident, I woke with fresh scraps sheared away, I would spend all day prodding my wounds, pondering, searching my bed and blankets for clues.

Nothing revealed itself. No cause, no answers. At least they were healing, sealing, leaving. Sure, purple discolorations marked me for memory, but skin was skin, and I was happy to have it back. Every time. When the healing process eventually quit, I became harried, frantic, and terrified of slumber. Exhaustion always won, but I never could sleep peacefully, or for long.

I finally identified the pattern yesterday while plucking at my fresh face holes. I finally figured out the difference between the safe clean nights and those I awoke from molested and bleeding.

Masturbation won't grow hair on your palms. Grandma was dead wrong. However, if you live in a poorly maintained apartment infested with roaches and frequently work your jockage with olive oil, pausing only to snort cocaine and slug Pabst Blue Ribbon, eventually you'll crash out, naked and slicked with oil and semen.

seriously I'm confused among the following:Don't shag orDon't do it with olive oil orDon't do it with any oil orbuy a roach spray orfuck roaches and satisfy them before satisfying yourself orall of the above???

Masturbate with Raid and save the olive oil for frying the dead roaches up with garlic....a tasty protein filled treat.

check out this blurb from the Book: Psychology of Men: Psychoanalytic Perspectives by Gerald I. Fogel

page 126:"I always thought sex was dirty. Taking advantage of poor girls,hypnotizing them,sticking my penis in the vagina, I was repelled.When a kid said that my mother--I mean father--sticks his penis in mother,I was revolted. That whole area is dirty. The dead cat bloated like shit. The snakes rapid as roaches. There was a roach here,there are roaches in my apartment,I was masturbating and saw a roach. The flat snakes wriggling is like a disgusting part of my life, like sudden roaches that panic you. I think the dream is about me as disgusting and rotting. It's odd that I dreamed that I'm disgusting after talking of successful sex with women."" It's odd, maybe I think that I'm female. I feel like the image in the dream,distended and round. The snakes are soft brown penises. They have a homing propensity to this large, dead cat. It's a nest in plastic. A large balloon with fur on it. Then I can see that it has feet and paws. The dead cat in the state of decomposition. I always thought the womb was an unhealthy place. It had acrid odors. That the womb sheds its lining means that it's a cavity that rots. The sexual parts of the woman are frightening. You never know what will come out of it: liquid,farts. It's like going into a cavern with stalagmites and stalactites. You could get lost in there."